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Did Twitter ban user for “strange” Limbaugh activity?

Christian businessman James Paris says he never read so much hate on his Twitter feed in more than a year of participation on the micro-blogging site.
After pointing tweeps (Twitter users) via link to his sarcastic blog post, Why The NFL Was 100% Right In Banning Rush Limbaugh, the tweets (comments) back to him came fast and mean.

“It’s the first time since I have been on Twitter that I started receiving very hateful messages like ‘You are a racist … You are not a Christian … You are the devil,'” Paris said.

Then came something Paris wasn’t expecting: a one-week ban from Twitter.

“There was more than a 150 re-tweets of my article by various people who had come to my blog directly. I can only assume this ban is related to my Rush Limbaugh piece because that was really the only thing that happened last week and that’s what Twitter is claiming as the time frame where I violated their terms of service,” Paris said.

“People that were against Limbaugh were coming to my article after the re-tweets were posted thinking that they were going to read an article that would somehow buttress their viewpoint that the NFL was correct in banning Rush Limbaugh. When they realize they’ve been had … I believe that generated complaints to Twitter. I’ve never had one complaint from Twitter. I’ve never heard from them one way or the other. I honestly don’t understand exactly what the reason is that they are banning me.”

Well, I guess I know how Rush Limbaugh feels. This week I posted a blog piece supporting Rush and I received thousands of visits to my blog. I also engaged in probably one hundred ‘debates’ with people on Twitter about the whole Rush Limbaugh/NFL controversy. Today, I received the below message that I have been suspended from Twitter for one week. Obviously, someone did not like what I was saying in support of Rush…

What seems to be most upsetting to Paris is the page notification that comes up when people try to get to his Twitter page, username, “Jameslparis”:

Sorry, the account you were headed to has been suspended due to strange activity. Mosey along now, nothing to see here.

“For me to spend a year-and-a-half building up a Twitter following and then to have my Twitter account shut off and then when people go to my Twitter page it says that I’ve been disconnected for ‘strange activity’ … as far as anyone else knows I could have been involved with child pornography or some type of scam,” Paris said. “It really impugns my reputation for them to leave it so vague. It’s their responsibility to tell me why I was banned in much more clear terms than what they did in that suspension letter.

“The actual suspension is posted up on my blog and it makes reference to the word ‘bunch.’ They don’t use a numerical figure. They say that I violated their policy of spamming by posting to a quote ‘bunch’ of accounts. I’m not even exactly sure what that means. I do know that I personally was engaged with at least 100 people on Twitter about the whole Rush Limbaugh thing,” he said.

Paris said he wasn’t selling anything. “I never received any kind of screen warning that said, ‘you are responding too much … stop.’ I could never imagine that I am somehow dragging down their network or something with my meager activity.

“It was certainly just part of what I felt was the purpose of Twitter, which is social networking … going back and forth on issues and discussions. I had no idea that there was a limit to any of that. Especially something that was on topic,” Paris said.

Paris said he has not received an explanation from Twitter despite sending a request for one to its public relations department by e-mail.

“I’m not a big believer in coincidence and I don’t think this is a coincidence,” Paris said. “And it was all in relation to the spike in activity that happened to coincide with the Rush Limbaugh article that I posted.”

No response to a media request for an interview or statement from Twitter was received at the time of publication of this article.